History of Content Marketing

Content marketing is not new. It has been around for hundreds of years. Credit is often given to John Deere’s The Furrow magazine as being the first example of corporate storytelling. John Deere leveraged The Furrow, not to sell John Deere equipment, but to educate farmers on new technology and how they could be more successful business owners (thus, content marketing). Full infographic on the history of content marketing.

Barriers to Entry Are Gone

There were three major barriers to entry that used to exist as a gate to corporate publishing. These no longer exist and were discussed in detail in Get Content Get Customers. The barriers include:

Content Acceptance – You don’t have to be the Wall Street Journal anymore to have your customers accept and engage in your content.

Talent – In the past, most journalists were against working for non-media brands, as it was seen as tainting their profession. Today, writers, editors and journalists are available in literally every industry to help you produce great content. The majority of jobs available today are on the brand side, not in traditional media. The stigma of working for non-media brands, although still remaining, is not nearly as strong.

Technology – Anyone can publish content on the web today for almost no investment.

The Difference Between Media and Non-Media Brands

There is only one thing that separates the content developed by a media company and content developed by brands like Intel, John Deere or LEGO: How the money comes in.

For a media company, content is created in order to make money directly of the creation of content through paid content sales (direct purchase of content) or advertising sales (someone sponsors the content that is created, like we see in newspapers and magazines).

In all other respects, the content creation activities in both types of companies are generally the same. This is important to realize, in that non-media brands are competing with traditional media for attention and retention, just like you compete with the regular competitors in your field.

As you can see in the chart above (full content marketing research here), corporations are indeed all media companies today, involving themselves in tactics that used to be relegated to only traditional publishers.

Storytelling at the Center

As companies like Coca-Cola are showing us with their Content 2020 initiative, storytelling is at the center of new marketing today.

The Big Content Challenge

So, as content marketing and storytelling become a larger part of the marketing organization in general, we are seeing an evolution of the marketing department transform itself into more of a publishing department. Although this is not an easy transition and the pain has just begun, some larger brands have clearly made this transition. For example, Kelly Services now spends over 60% of their marketing budget on content creation and distribution activities. Even though Kelly’s VP of Thought Leadership Todd Wheatland (and Content Marketing World speaker) states that Kelly has been “doing content marketing for more than 10 years”, many brands are still struggling with content marketing structure.

Even though the barriers to entry are gone and we have all the opportunities in the world to develop valuable and compelling content, the biggest corporate challenge is the creation of engaging content. As you can see in the chart below, creating content that actually engages customers and prospects is the number one hurdle.

Good to Great Content Marketing – 6 Differences

Through all the research (both quantitative and qualitative) we’ve found six differences that are separating good to great content marketers. I’ll be publishing these results in detail in my next post. In the meantime, the full presentation is below for your sharing pleasure.

To the opening paragraph, I’ll never forget a couple years ago when I was browsing an advertising history site. I can’t even remember the site now, but I happened upon an advertorial of sorts from the late 1890s. It was a shaving cream manufacturer that was giving “3 Tips for the Smoothest Shave”.

It kind of slapped me in the face that this whole content marketing thing had been around much, much longer than I had originally estimated.

http://www.messagesystems.com John Pinson

Great stuff Joe. Caught your presentation at OMS in San Diego earlier this month and learned a lot. Your advice on removing the brand from the story and cultivating a community was really pertinent to what I’m working on right now. Thank you!

http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Awesome John. Thanks so much!

http://www.rodney-dennis.com rodney dennis

I’ve been reading more and more articles about the importance of content marketing.

I have a background in journalism, but what I find interesting and can see happening, is more and more journalists using their skills and training in content marketing as more journalism jobs begin to disappear.

http://clairification.blogspot.com Claire Axelrad

This is a great post, filled with rich history and tips for moving forward. I love the concept of the evolution of marketing departments towards more publishing. It’s a great metaphor for engagement. Storytellers have always been engaging.

Once concern I have, coming from a nonprofit background, is how resource intensive it is to do this really effectively. Any thoughts on how how nonprofits can embrace the evolution of content marketing in a digital world?

Many thanks!

http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Thanks Claire…I’m not going to lie to you. It is very resource intensive. It means thinking about the culture and how the non-profit shares its story through multiple media and engages in conversations. We are actually doing a full workshop on this for Content Marketing World.